Twitter Paid $36 Million for IBM Patents

Twitter said it forked over $36 million to purchase 900 patents from International Business Machines in December, according to its annual report released Thursday.

The company previously had reported the purchase as well as a patent cross-licensing deal with IBM but didn’t say how much it had paid.

In its 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Twitter said it now has 956 U.S. patents and about another 100 patent applications pending. It owned just nine prior to its stock-market debut in November. The company’s portfolio is still considerably smaller than other tech and media giants such as Google and Apple.

“Many companies in these industries, including many of our competitors, have substantially larger patent and intellectual property portfolios than we do, which could make us a target for litigation as we may not be able to assert counterclaims against parties that sue us for patent, or other intellectual property infringement,” Twitter said in its filing.